Seoul Brothers

This is Kai and his buddy Jake. When Kai started at his current preschool almost 2 years ago, Jake was in his class. They have so much in common, it's kinda scary. As you can tell, they're both Korean, they're both adoptees. They're both H0lt babies, and they were born 10 days apart from each other. I think it's comforting for us as parents to think maybe they even crossed paths at Holt Korea before they joined our families. They most definitely share a special bond that they probably don't even understand yet, but someday they will. 

We're so thankful for the friendship we've found in Jake and his parents. Not only do the boys genuinely like playing together, but we parents enjoy each other's company as well. Over the past year we've gotten to know this special family quite well and look forward to many years of kid and family outings together.

Memorial Day weekend they invited us to join them a their family beach cabin. We all had a great time, especially the boys who played together non-stop for almost 48 hours. They tolerated all the togetherness quite well and only had a few little quarrels. The parents enjoyed some much needed R&R as we visited and vegged (and shopped the outlet mall!).  The boys spent lots of time on this little pull out bed, watching movies, playing games and eating Doritos in bed. Need I say: Kai was in HEAVEN! They had great fun playing in the ocean also. What a fun time! 

Flashback Friday

June 10, 2009

I'll be posting a flashback every Friday, thought it'd be kinda fun. The funny thing about this photo is that this is the way the couch in our family room looks right now! Minus the toys, but piled high with all his blankets from his room, and some of them the same as what you see here. The biggest difference is, now that he's 5, his beloved Kim-Chee stays in his bed... ya-hoo!

After and Before

The highlight of our winter (and year) was the remodel of our kitchen. When we moved to our house 2 years ago, the kitchen was the only thing we didn't love. Luckily, my husband is always one to see potential in things and has a vision for the future. We've known this project was coming since we moved in and now that it's complete I couldn't be happier. I love cooking again! And, it makes entertaining much, much, much easier. I decided to go for reverse order of how you normally see remodel pictures... let's start with the "after" shots! They're much prettier anyways!  Look at all my glorious counter and cabinet space! Our primary goal of the remodel was expanding these two specific areas.

Love, love, love my new sink and garden window! I spend sooo much time looking out this window. Now it's even filled with a small herb garden, my orchids and a few other small plants. It's actually a garden window!

The entire kitchen was gutted! Thanks to asbestos in the walls...

Now for the not-so-pretty before photos. Sorry, but you've gotta see 'em to believe it! This was my entire cabinet and counter space... yes, what you see in this one shot below is ALL of it! I could expand it by pulling out my bread board. 

 We took this wall out and opened it up to the hallway beyond...

For a frame of reference with the after photos, all the appliances are in the same general locations. The stove moved by about 6 inches, but other than that they're all the same.

I love cooking in my new kitchen... anyone wanna come over for dinner???

We couldn't have done it without the fine folks at Rainbow Valley. Simply put... they rock!

Jamboree Time!

Baseball is serious business, as you can see from the picture above. Today was Kai's first baseball (t-ball) game ever and he was so excited. Not only was it one game, they had a jamboree and played three games (well, three very, very, very short games) back to back. All that ball playing got these little Eagles soaring off into baseball season.
Kai's first time up to bat he got a hit and ran his little heart out to first base, but the ball beat him there. He was crushed he got out, but felt better when the next hitter on his team also got an out (good thing they don't keep score!). Luckily, by the end of the third game he got a chance to run all the bases and made a run into home.

Not much time for snacks...

Action shot! Nice slide!

I learned something about myself today watching these games. Baseball's not so bad. I've never found it a very exciting sport to watch, moves way too slow for me. Somehow it's totally different when you're watching your own little superstar. I think we all agree this is going to be a fun, busy, exciting baseball season! 

Libby Jump

The story goes that Joe's Gramma Libby had a special jump all her own. It is affectionately referred to as the "Libby Jump". It's a kind of mid-air forward/ backward split. Here's a little video of Kai showing off his skillz.

Hellll-oooo??

While out on a training run for our recent half marathon, my running partner asked me if I still had my blog. Honestly, up until that moment, I had completely forgotten about it for the past several months. So, if you've been checking for updates, please accept my deepest apologies. I did not intend to be neglectful, I just completely forgot I had this little journal dangling out in cyberspace.
The fall, winter and spring have brought much activity and excitement to our house. We survived our kitchen remodel which occurred over the holidays, and the freak March snow storm which followed and had us living in a hotel for 3 days. We survived Kai's first "real" soccer season, although it appears t-ball will be an entirely different beast... we'll see how we do with that one! We've had a beautiful spring which has allowed for some outside projects already (Joe's just finishing up his shed), and has helped my little veggie garden get off to a good start. Kai is learning so much and is almost finished with his Pre-K program at his preschool, "graduation" is right around the corner! I'll try to do some catching up in the near future, but for now I'll leave you with a few more recent photos.

Sportin' a new summer 'do

 Soccer monster!

Tulips

He insisted on the mohawk, and you can catch a glimpse of the new kitchen in the background. That'll have to be a post all it's own!

Other things keeping me busy have been working, housekeeping, running, and learning new and interesting things to cook or bake that fit my vegan gluten free lifestyle.

Still here!!

I'll bet you all think I forgot I even have a blog... well, I did, for a while! Things have been super, super, super busy for us this fall and it is going by WAY too fast! Can't believe next week is Thanksgiving! And boy, do I have soooo much to be thankful for this year.

This'll be short, but hopefully I'll get back into posting more regularly... we'll see. Here are a few pictures from our weekend in the mountains last weekend, celebrating my Mom's 60th birthday. We had tons-o-fun!

Trying out the bikes at the rental house.

We woke up to a little snow Saturday morning!

Don't throw snowballs at Grandma... she'll throw 'em right back!

Grandma and her little cupcakes!

Harvesting!

Some one is awfully proud of the fact that his carrots are bigger than mine!

So, it seems a huge amount of time has once again passed since I blogged. The garden is in full swing, despite an unusually cool summer here. Probably not the crop sizes I would have normally gotten, but at least we're getting something to harvest. Tonight we enjoyed dinner from the garden; corn, tomatoes and carrots! Lots more of each to harvest soon, with zuchinni and eggplant which should be ready any day. Here's some pics of the bounty!

This weekend Kai discovered that, much to his dismay, he loves cashews. Especially when paired with raspberries. He invented a new food: razz-ews!

First harvest!

OK, so I know it's incredibly meager, but not a bad start. And tasty, too! There will be more snap peas soon, but unfortunately, this may be my only radish. I'm about to go pull the rest out because they're starting to go to seed... guess I got 'em started a little too late. Oh well, this is my first shot at this.

Backyard Excitement!

Just a few of the exciting things going on in our backyard these days.

We're all incredibly excited about this one!

Look at all those plump berries, ready to ripen!

I'm excited about this one...

Can you guess who's excited about this??

Other exciting things that happen in our backyard; nightly soccer matches, track races, hockey games, croquet, tag... you get the point. The play structure is not yet done, but done enough to play on and that's all that matters to a certain 4 year old boy!

Star Wars Dinner!

On the Menu:

Yoda Soda

Obi-Wan Kabobs

Jabba Jiggle

TIE Fighter Ties

Completed with:

R2D2 Treats

Tonight Kai and I surprised Joe with a Star Wars themed dinner. It was so fun! Those of you who know us know one thing: this man is nearly impossible to surprise, but we did it. Victory!

I thought for sure we were doomed when he "surprised" us by getting home from work nearly 2 hours early. When it came time to cook, we kicked him out of the kitchen and got to work. The force was with us and we pulled it off. The best part... Kai really, truly helped me make almost the whole dinner! He even built some of the Fighters and helped put the veggies on the light sabers (umm... I mean skewers). Sorry no pictures of the kabobs, lets just say... it's not a good idea to grill veggies on light sabers. They got a little, umm... black. We even made a menu and a Leg0 centerpiece. I had such a great time with this; from beginning (planning) to end (watching Joe very much enjoy his surprise dinner). Kai and I got the idea earlier this week when we found a SW cookbook at the library. Of course, we had to check it out and we knew what we had to do next! Kai kept the secret since Monday! Most definitely a fun, fun family memory!

(Sorry the pictures aren't the greatest. I had to take them quick before my hungry boys dug in!)

Garden Update

See Kai's little carrots poking up down in front?

Carrots, corn and radishes... OH MY!

...With snap peas, pumpkins, zucchini and

wax beans peaking up from the other bed.

Looking green and lush!

Has it really been less than 20 days since I last put up pictures of my veggie garden? Amazing, given how much it's grown! I'm excited to see what it does once we actually start getting some decent weather! As you can tell, things are coming right along. My two sad broccoli plants are still hanging in there and I am very curious to see how these strange, leggy things turn into edible broccoli (assuming they will). I think my radishes should be ready for harvest in a few weeks, and I'm very excited to get a taste of my home grown veggies. We picked our first strawberries this week, and it's becoming clear to me that with the rate we go through produce (OK... mostly me), my meager garden will be nothing more than outdoor nibbles, and most of it probably won't even make it in the house. That's OK, I love the growing process and this year is definitely a "test" to see how different crops come out and what works best in our climate. And I'm not gonna complain if my 4 year old wants to eat stuff straight from the garden!

May & June Hikes

May- Smith Rock State Park

This was done on our recent vacation. Smith Rock is so amazingly beautiful! Truly breathtaking. The hike started off rocky, but after a picnic lunch, ongoing Army stories from Mommy and just a little trail mix bribery from Daddy, we managed almost 2.5 miles! Our longest to date!

June- Heceta Head Lighthouse

This was on our beautiful coast, just last weekend on a spontaneous trip west. Joe was desperate to escape the high levels of valley pollens so we packed up and headed out for the night. This hike wasn't very long, but Kai did so much better on it than when we first tried it a year ago. I'm hoping we'll get another, longer hike in this month, but just in case... we've already got this one done! There were lots of interesting places to stop and explore, and Kai really enjoyed climbing on all the big roots!

perking up

After a weekend of nice weather and some help in my garden today, things are starting to look pretty good out there. Last weekend I pulled out a bunch of the broccoli that looked downright horrible (leaving two salvageable plants), got more carrot seeds planted and added a few starts. It left me feeling satisfied with how things are going, and feeling good to have a bit of green in the mix (I know, using starts... it's kinda cheating, but hey, it's keeping me motivated). Today Kai and I got seeds in for wax beans and zucchini (what decent garden doesn't have zucchini?). Now, the beds are full and nothing to do but water, watch and wait. Here's a few shots from Sunday, and amazingly, things have grown just since then!

Tomato, squash and eggplant starts

Pumpkins and snap peas,

with corn and carrots peeking out from the higher bed.

My container fruit garden.

Yum! Strawberries and blueberries!

Vacation Time!!

So, I had to get my starts in the garden because we went on vacation! I wouldn't be home to water them for a whole week, so I had to put them outside and trust that mother nature would do the watering for me. And, she did. Unfortunately, they haven't done as well as I had hoped, but some are coming along and salvageable. Oh well, it didn't take long to start the seeds... better get another batch going. I'll post some pathetic pics soon, but first, about that vacation...

We got to spend the whole week in a resort mountain town about 3 hours from our home. It is typically a beautiful area; nice and sunny this time of year. But since we were visiting, it decided to rain, and rain, and even snow... just a little (it appeared we brought the "valley weather" with us). The wet and cold weather forced us inside for some much needed R&R, and our little guy was fairly easy going all week which made it all that more relaxing. Let's not get crazy, we did have a melt down or two, but definitely the most laid back we've been able to get on a family vacation. Joe and I both had a few extra days of on either end of the week, so we got to spend about 10 fun filled family days together. I could have taken a few more vacation days, but Kai was definitely ready to go back to school last week! He missed his buddies terribly.

I can't get the video to upload, so here's a still photo few highlights!

Starting things off right with a snowball fight!

Kai is becoming quite the photographer.

Beauty abounds!

Pony riding is serious business.

Floating down the river...very, very slowly!

Biking around the resort.

We ended up with one beautiful day, in which we packed in those last 3 activities. We had some other nice weather, and had a nice hike on different day (first picture), more on that one later.